July 13, 2011

Sunflower Patch Craft

The last couple weeks I have seen some amazing sunflower crafts and really wanted to dive in and make one with my kids. I got my inspiration from Meet the Dubiens who made a darling handprint sunflower. I loved the effect that the tiny beads made in the middle of the sunflower!

I also got inspiration from Putti Prapancha who also made a darling handprint sunflower and I especially loved how she accompanied the activity with the story "This is the Sunflower" by Lola M. Schaefer. Putti also left me a comment on my Starburst Craft about how she had used fork painting before as grass and I absolutely loved that idea and decided to incorprate it into my own sunflower craft. A big thank you to these great ladies for the inspiration they gave me!!

We started off by reading "This is the Sunflower" by Lola M. Schaefer. Such a cute book that shows the life cycle of a sunflower and how a whole patch of sunflowers can come from the seeds of just one sunflower plant.

I chose to use the last page of the story as my theme for creating our sunflower craft, which showed the big patch of sunflowers.

And this is what we came up with after reading the story.

I know I am totally biased because because I made it, but I just love it to pieces! I seriously want to put them in a frame and hang them on the wall somewhere because they turned out so beautiful and the yellow just makes me so happy! The one pictured above is mine, but below is Andy's and honestly, I love his better than mine.

I love how his fork-painted grass has so much texture and is thicker than mine, and I think the triangles he cut in his leaves did more justice than mine.

Directions:
1. Cut out some circles from the yellow sheet of card stock. I traced my circles with a small cup so they were all the same size.

2. Use your scissors to cut little triangles all the way around each of your circles. It doesn't have to be perfect. Imperfection is perfection in my opinion.

When you are finished you will have the body of the sunflower.

3. Cut some leaf shapes out of the green paper. I drew mine in pencil first and then cut them out but you can just freehand them with the scissors.

4. Cut a couple triangle slits in each of the leaves to make a cool effect.

4. Cut out thin pieces of green paper for the stems of the sunflowers.

5. Now all you do is assemble and glue the flowers together on your blue paper. We started by glueing on the stems, then the yellow flower heads and then the leaves. I also wanted to mention that we folded up the triangle ends of our sunflower so it popped out of the page a little. You can see what I mean in the picture below.

6. Put a thick circle of gluestick in the middle of your sunflowers and sprinkle on your tiny black beads to make the sunflower seeds. I tried using school glue at first but felt the glue stick was easier to control the beds. Let the glue dry completely before trying to handle your paper.

7. Lastly, using the green paint and plastic fork, paint some grass on the bottom of your paper.

Here are some close-ups of some of the flowers.

I LOVED this craft!! I felt like I was creating an art piece with all the different layers, colors, textures and materials used. I hope you enjoy it and decide to try it out for yourself!

What a wonderful idea! I'd definitely frame it and hang it somewhere. When it fades you can always replace it with another beautiful craft. Or you could take a picture of it, frame it, and keep it 'round forever!

Folloing you back from the Blog hop. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.I have a grand daughter who just turned one so I'm sure I'll find some interesting crafty things for her and I to do in here over the coming years!Denisefrom BeadedEmbellishmentshttp://beadedembellishments.blogspot.com

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